Read Death Along the Spirit Road Online
Authors: C. M. Wendelboe
Death Along the Spirit Road (39 page)
“And to maintain this life, would you kill again? Would you have killed Jason to keep it?” Manny started off at a pace that allowed Reuben to keep up.
“I didn’t kill Jason. If this Ricky Bell killed Jumping Bull, he could have killed Jason with little effort, given the kid’s rap sheet you mentioned. As much as I like your visits,
kola
, maybe we’ll run back to my trailer and you can leave me while I am still in control of myself.”
kola
, maybe we’ll run back to my trailer and you can leave me while I am still in control of myself.”
Reuben was still capable of killing if he saw the need. “Come on, big brother. Kick yourself in the ass, unless you want to concede.”
Reuben found a burst of speed that overtook Manny for ten yards until Manny picked it up and passed him. He kept just ahead of Reuben on their way back to Reuben’s trailer. He beat Reuben by a hundred yards and squatted down, waiting for him to catch up. Reuben’s hand rubbed one leg as he limped over and sat on the ground beside Manny. He hung his head between his legs and coughed.
“You know who Jason killed in his AIM days, and somehow this is mixed up with his murder,” Manny said when he caught his breath.
“That might be,” Reuben said, calm once again. “But that’s no concern of mine. And especially no concern to a
wicasa wakan
.”
wicasa wakan
.”
Manny’s cell phone beeped a message to call Soske. “We had several unsolved homicides around here in the 1970s,” he said. “But only one killed with a .45. That was Billy Two Moons.”
“.45 auto or Long Colt?”
Papers shuffled on the phone. “The autopsy report doesn’t say, except that the coroner recovered two intact slugs from the body. The other three hit bone and were too deformed to help.”
“Does it mention the type of bullet, the style, or the weight?”
Papers shuffled again. “Solid lead slugs. Semi-wadcutter design. Each weighed 255 grains.”
Manny knew officers from the Hostage Rescue Team who shot Colt .45 auto pistols, but they shot hollow points with a sharper nose for feeding reliability, not the semi-wadcutter, blunted-style lead bullets recovered from Two Moons.
“Tell me the evidence from the Two Moons case is still available.”
“I’m certain it is,” Soske said. “The sheriff’s office here never gets rid of anything involving a capital offense.”
“Can you overnight those two intact slugs to Quantico?”
“Sure. Just a matter of clearing things with the SO.”
Manny told Soske the address of the FBI ballistics lab at Quantico. He figured that both slugs and the old revolver he seized from Jason’s display case would arrive there at about the same time.
On the way to the OST police building, Manny detoured and pulled to the curb at the Cohen Home. The same young woman at the front desk glanced up at Manny and waved him on. He started for Chief Horn’s room, even now feeling like a young tribal officer reporting for duty. Manny rapped on the door and Horn jerked it open. He held a beer in one hand and what was left of a sandwich in the other. A smile spread across his face and he stepped aside.
Manny thought he’d fallen into the twilight zone as he stepped into the apartment. Gone was the mound of empty beers overflowing the garbage can containing last week’s leftovers. The kitchen table was visible this time, though a stack of papers hid one corner. Horn motioned to an overstuffed chair. Manny was unsure whether it was there on his previous visit.
“It wasn’t my idea.” Horn seemed to be reading Manny’s mind. “My granddaughter Shannon thought I should clean up my act if I have the FBI visiting. I told her it was just Manny Tanno, but she insisted on cleaning it anyway.”
“I like it.”
Horn’s smile broadened as he basked in the compliment. “I don’t get many visitors. Shannon said I might get more if I keep my place clean. That, and maybe be more sociable. What do you think she meant by that?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Manny lied.
Horn finished his beer and set his sandwich on a paper plate on the table. “But this isn’t a social call.”
Manny shook his head. “I’m still struggling with the Red Cloud murder. You said something the other day that struck a chord, Chief. You said Billy Two Moons and Alex Jumping Bull hung together a lot.”
“Inseparable. If one got tossed into the hoosegow, the other did; just for solidarity, I always thought. Or maybe they were lovers.” He tossed his head back and laughed.
“Where was Jumping Bull the night Two Moons was killed up by Hill City?”
Horn shrugged. “No one knew.”
“But if you had to guess, where do you figure he was that night?”
“With Two Moons,” Horn answered immediately. “Alex would have been with him that night like every other night.”
“Even if Two Moons planned on meeting Reuben and partying, as he claimed?”
“Even then.” Horn took another bite from his sandwich. “When Jumping Bull came up missing right after the murder, we all thought Reuben was good for that one, too. We told the Pennington County deputies investigating the homicide that Jumping Bull would have been at the scene, but they came up with a dead end on that. I always figured that they had their confession to one murder, enough to put Reuben away, and they were satisfied at that. Jumping Bull’s body was never found. Oh, they put out the obligatory BOLO missing-persons bullshit, but I don’t figure they worked too hard to ‘be on the lookout’ for a missing Indian.”
Manny stood and stretched, eye to eye with his old chief sitting down. Manny explained that Jumping Bull, under the alias of Clifford Coyote, had been murdered in a Minneapolis apartment two weeks ago, at an address where he had been living and receiving checks from Elizabeth for nearly thirty years.
Horn chuckled. “So the peckerwood’s been in Minneapolis all this time.”
“Why do you figure he ran away?”
“Best reason in the world I can think of: fear. The little bastard was afraid of being found and killed like his pal Two Moons.”
“My feelings exactly. I just had to have someone else that’s sane say the same thing.”
CHAPTER 21
Manny pulled into the parking lot just as Willie emerged from the OST police building. “I was coming to hunt you up, but we can jaw inside.”
Manny followed him through the locked door and into the empty break room. Willie shut the door and shuffled to the coffeepot. Empty. He scrunched his nose at the burnt coffee in the bottom of the pot before putting it back on the burner. He turned a chair around and sat facing Manny. “I talked with Aunt Lizzy, but I don’t feel very good about it.” He looked down. The guilt Willie held inside made the room feel as heavy as a low-flying summer storm cloud.
“Did she tell you about Clifford Coyote?”
“She did. I just can’t figure why I didn’t see some of this.”
“What?”
“There never was a Clifford Coyote.”
“We knew that, but we didn’t know why the ruse.”
“After the Two Moons murder, Jumping Bull took the name Coyote out of fear of being killed next. Jumping Bull was Aunt Lizzy’s cousin from Crow Creek. When she moved out here after she married Reuben, she got Jumping Bull his first place to stay here in Pine Ridge, and tried to recruit him into AIM right after that Custer takeover fiasco.”
“But he never made the grade.”
“How’d you know?”
Manny forced a smile. “There are some things I recall about those days. For one thing, a man had to be a warrior, or be considered a warrior by some convoluted standards in order to be accepted by the others and allowed to join. From what Chief Horn said, Jumping Bull was anything but. He was just a drunk and a petty thief.”
“Anyway, Jumping Bull fled after Reuben killed Billy Two Moons.”
“Then he was blackmailing Jason?”
Willie nodded. “Jumping Bull knew that Jason paid Billy Two Moons to kill his parents.”
“How did he know?”
“Two Moons and he were partying on the money Jason shelled out to rig that car wreck with the Red Clouds. When Reuben found the car that night in China Gulch, Jumping Bull hid in the backseat, because he knew Reuben would have him killed, too. But before he fled to Minneapolis, Jumping Bull also told Aunt Lizzy what he knew. At first, he was content to just be alive and gone from the rez. Then he got greedy and started blackmailing Jason. Aunt Lizzy felt like Reuben did, that Jason sold out for the almighty dollar rather than stay in the movement with the other AIM brothers. She was happy to help Jumping Bull bleed some of that Red Cloud money from Jason.”
“You believe that?”
Willie nodded. “It’s what she told me.”
“Chief Horn said that Two Moons did mechanic work for the police when he was in jail, and on his own when he was out. He could have made the wreck appear as if the brake lines had ruptured, to make it look like an accident.”
Willie nodded again. “Jason’s lackluster performance with the family business disappointed his parents. The year after Jason graduated college and started working for them, he lost the company’s clients tons of money. The Red Clouds didn’t want their business pissed away, and tasked their corporate attorney to deed their assets to the tribe when they died.”
“That new car Two Moons drove the night he was murdered,” Manny said. “That’s how someone without a pot to pee in managed a new Chrysler.”
Willie walked to the vending machine. “You’re right on there,” he called over his shoulder. “The new car was Two Moons’s payment for rigging the wreck.” When the machine spit out a MoonPie, Willie returned to his seat.
“And Elizabeth despised Jason enough that she kept Jumping Bull’s whereabouts secret all those years?”
Willie nodded. “When she was in AIM and WARN, the thing she hated the most was the status quo. Jason’s hiring Two Moons to kill his parents for control of the family business got to working on her. She knew she could turn in Jason at any time, but she thought it would hurt him more to be bled dry all those years.”
“But things went south for Jason. Clara showed me a letter. Jumping Bull was fixing to pull the plug on his long-distance relationship with the ‘Donald Trump of the West.’ ”
Willie nodded. “Aunt Lizzy confirmed what Clara told you, that Jason ran the business into the ground. He had a string of mediocre properties mixed with some that fell flat. He spent money like there was no tomorrow—or no yesterday to catch up with him. He bought Lakota antiquities he couldn’t afford, and something had to give. So Jason thought that he could cut off his blackmail money to Jumping Bull, that after all those years no one would believe him if he implicated Jason in masterminding the car wreck that killed his parents.”
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